"What is past is prologue"
About this Quote
A four-word trapdoor: it sounds like wisdom, but it’s really dramaturgy. “What is past is prologue” doesn’t comfort you with nostalgia; it warns you that the story has already been loading its gun. In Shakespeare’s hands, the past isn’t a scrapbook. It’s stage directions.
The line appears in The Tempest, spoken by Antonio while he’s trying to recruit Sebastian into murder. That context matters because it stains the aphorism with opportunism. Antonio isn’t admiring history; he’s weaponizing it. The “past” becomes a persuasive device: everything that has happened so far (betrayals, exiles, old power grabs) is framed as the natural setup for the next crime. Prologue, in other words, is permission.
That’s the subtext Shakespeare threads through so many plays: people don’t simply have histories; they perform them. Hamlet can’t stop interpreting his father’s death as the opening act of a revenge tragedy. Macbeth treats prophecy like a script note. Even Caesar’s Rome is packed with men who use precedent as a mask for ambition. The phrase works because it flatters a listener’s sense of inevitability while quietly erasing moral choice. If the past is merely “prologue,” then the future feels pre-written, and responsibility can be shrugged off as plot.
It also doubles as a meta-theatrical wink. Shakespeare reminds us that we, the audience, love backstory because it makes chaos legible. The danger is believing that legibility equals destiny.
The line appears in The Tempest, spoken by Antonio while he’s trying to recruit Sebastian into murder. That context matters because it stains the aphorism with opportunism. Antonio isn’t admiring history; he’s weaponizing it. The “past” becomes a persuasive device: everything that has happened so far (betrayals, exiles, old power grabs) is framed as the natural setup for the next crime. Prologue, in other words, is permission.
That’s the subtext Shakespeare threads through so many plays: people don’t simply have histories; they perform them. Hamlet can’t stop interpreting his father’s death as the opening act of a revenge tragedy. Macbeth treats prophecy like a script note. Even Caesar’s Rome is packed with men who use precedent as a mask for ambition. The phrase works because it flatters a listener’s sense of inevitability while quietly erasing moral choice. If the past is merely “prologue,” then the future feels pre-written, and responsibility can be shrugged off as plot.
It also doubles as a meta-theatrical wink. Shakespeare reminds us that we, the audience, love backstory because it makes chaos legible. The danger is believing that legibility equals destiny.
Quote Details
| Topic | Time |
|---|---|
| Source | William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1; line appears in the play as printed in the First Folio (1623). |
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